Brainwashed ideology runs headlong into common sense

 

I'm going to embed a video clip below.  It shows Gina Plata-Nino, the Director of SNAP Policy and Advocacy at the Food Research and Action Center, being questioned by Rep. Brandon Gill.  The topic of discussion is efforts to remove unhealthy food choices - in this particular case, sodas - from the list of items eligible to be bought using funds from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Ms. Plata-Nino is clearly left-wing and populist in her approach, defending peoples' right to use SNAP benefits in any way they please.  Notice how she avoids, evades and dodges any attempt to get her to admit that sugary sodas are in no way nutritional, and aren't really "food" as the SNAP program was originally intended to fund.  She literally can't be persuaded to acknowledge facts.  Instead, all she can do is repeat her pre-programmed talking points.

It's a bit like medical administrators and professionals who absolutely cannot admit that only biological women can become pregnant and give birth.  They daren't acknowledge that fact, because in doing so they would be forced to acknowledge that "trans" women are not, in fact, women at all - merely cosmetically adapted males.

Here's the video.  It's only about five minutes long, but I think it's worth watching.

That's what we're facing in every election in this country.  Districts dominated by people who use government benefits will listen to advocates and politicians like Ms. Plata-Nino, and vote in lockstep with those who promise them more benefits without cost to themselves.  Districts dominated by people whose taxes have to fund those benefits will be (legitimately) angry at how they're wasted, exploited and abused by the recipients.

Sadly, more and more districts are dominated by those who want something for nothing, and vote accordingly.  Many of those votes are, of course, illegitimate, as the widespread investigations into voter fraud and electoral register mismanagement are demonstrating.  Will that be enough to put things right?  Your guess is as good as mine . . .

Peter

So much for meat and water!

 

I'm sure most of my readers have grown used to vegetarians vegans anti-meat activists trumpeting that it wastes far too much water to produce a pound, or a kilogram, of beef, compared to just eating vegetables and fruit.  Turns out they've been fudging the numbers, to put it mildly.

From Sama Hoole on X:

The crime they see: 15,415 litres of water to produce one kilogram of beef. Every campaign, every documentary, every leaflet through the door since about 2012.

The crime they do: not reading the paper.

The figure is real. It comes from Mekonnen and Hoekstra at the University of Twente, and it is careful, peer-reviewed work. What the campaigns strip out is that the same authors split that number into three parts, because the three parts are not the same thing at all.

Green water is rain. It falls on the grass. The cow eats the grass. For beef, green water is about 94 per cent of that headline.

Blue water is the stuff that matters. Rivers, lakes, aquifers. The stuff that gets pumped, metered, fought over in court, and does not come back.

So here is the blue water, in litres per kilogram, from the same authors, same method, same units.

• Pistachios: 7,602
• Almonds: 3,816
• Walnuts: 2,451
• Dates: 1,250
• Cashews: 921
• Beef: 550

Read that last line again, then go and look at what is in your granola.

The 15,415 counts rain that fell on a Welsh hillside as a cost, against an animal that was standing in it, on land where nothing else grows, in a country where rain is the one thing we have never once been short of.

The pistachio is drinking fourteen times more of the water that actually runs out.

I've no doubt the "greenies" will object that most of the rainwater runs off and feeds their vegetables, so it's by definition "greener" than beef anyway:  but that's splitting nutritional hairs, IMHO.  I'll continue to favor a carnivore diet, thank you very much!

Peter

Verily, the mind doth boggle...

 

I've been something of a "prepper" for many years, but until last night it had never even crossed my mind to consider this.

The city of Annapolis, Maryland, has released an emergency preparedness guide tailored to the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that members of the community are more likely to be affected by natural disasters.

The Annapolis Office of Emergency Management, led by Kevin Simmons, published a graphic this week outlining its emergency preparedness recommendations for LGBTQ+ residents. The office states that disasters “present unique challenges for the LGBTQ+ community,” claiming that “After a disaster, LGBTQ+ people are almost twice as likely as the overall population to be displaced - and far more likely to face food insecurity, unsanitary conditions, and isolation during recovery.”

Under the recommendation to stay connected, the guide advises residents to establish a support network that can be contacted during emergencies and to identify “safe spaces” where resources may be available. For medical preparedness, the guide recommends speaking with healthcare providers to get an “emergency supply of retroviral and/or hormonal medications.”

The guide’s list of recommended supplies to gather includes standard emergency items as well as things such as “syringes” and “gender-affirming clothing.” It also lists “chest binders,” “wigs,” and “packers,” which are used by trans-identifying biological women to make it appear as though they have a bulge in their pants. 

“Extreme heat can be challenging for those who rely on gender-affirming clothing,” the guide warned at the bottom. “Stay hydrated and take frequent breaks from chest binders on hot days.”

There's more at the link.

For the life of me, I can't see how LGBTQ+ concerns for preparedness are in any way, shape or form different from everyone else's concerns for the same thing.  Water doesn't ask for your sexual orientation before you drink it:  food, before you eat it:  and a blanket, before you sleep in it.  This appears to be a thoroughly artificial attempt to drag the politically correct cause du jour into an essentially practical field that has nothing whatsoever to do with gender.

I can, however, assure you that if, in a crisis, people come to me demanding that I give them a bottle of lesbian-safe water, or gay-safe guacamole, or bisexual beans, or ... well, you get the idea ... I'm likely to be very rude to them, and anything but sympathetic.

Ye Gods and little fishes . . .

Peter

A misuse of AI that I hadn't foreseen

 

We know artificial intelligence (AI) can be a very useful tool for good.  Sadly, it can be used for evil as well.

Police have launched a criminal investigation into an officer accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) systems to "create evidential material in a number of cases".

The Derbyshire Police officer has been removed from front-line duties, pending the outcome of the investigation, the force said.

The officer is alleged to have perverted the course of justice, but no arrests have been made, police added.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said they were working with police, adding: "We are engaging with defence teams and the courts in appropriate cases."

There's more at the link.

I hadn't given this enough consideration, but thinking about it, it's potentially a very serious problem.  Perverting the course of justice is bad enough, but think about how a group with a particular ideology can fabricate "evidence" to persuade their government to act in a certain way towards another country?  The neocon outrage at President Trump's announcement of a deal with Iran is a good example.  What if the outspoken pro-war ideologues could concoct their own evidence to "show" that the deal is a lousy one, and should be abandoned?  What if they could "create" evidence to persuade Iran to start hostilities again, because it was convinced America was about to attack it again?

This adds a very worrying dimension to AI.  It will probably be almost impossible for a non-specialist to figure out whether or not the evidence presented is authentic or fabricated.  Indeed, it may contain just enough truth to be persuasive, and add enough falsehood to lead to a wrong conclusion.  How would one prove it false when it contains at least some truth?

This adds new complexity to the issue of censorship - of news, of social media, of whatever.  First Street Journal gives us examples.

It was just over four years ago that we wrote about The New York Times publishing an article by a member of their own Editorial Board, Greg Bensinger, telling readers of that august supporter of Freedom of the Press that it was bad, bad, bad that Elon Musk was trying to buy Twitter, and that his promise to make the social media service an “inclusive arena for free speech” and that “Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place.”

. . .

We pointed out that The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[2] to claim that restrictions on speech actually promoted freedom of speech. They also published articles claiming that Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence ... And today? There were riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland, following the attempted beheading of a Scotsman by a Sudanese asylum seeker, and the Usual Suspects complained not about the attack, but about Twitter not censoring people writing about it! There’s more of that here and here and here.

The United Kingdom’s Secretary for Northern Island Hilary Benn said, following the knife attack in Belfast:

Social media companies have a very heavy responsibility. It’s why we’re going to bring forward new powers next week to make it clear that social media companies need to take down illegal content, particularly when we are facing circumstances such as the ones we’ve seen in Northern Ireland over the last two days.

It’s simple: our good friends on the left are afraid, deathly afraid, that if the people in general have the information Our Betters would rather not see disseminated, people might, horrors! draw conclusions from that information of which the left would disapprove!

Again, more at the link.

Imagine that the sources quoted by First Street Journal had been "massaged" by AI to give a rather different emphasis to the news than the reality?  For that matter, what if the journal itself used AI to give a particular propaganda twist to its presentation of the news?  Merely by selecting words and phrases that "shaded" the presentation in one direction or another, its impression on readers could be significantly altered;  and AI systems, with their vast resources of language, facts, figures and news, would be in an ideal position to shape and form that impression.

Hmmmm . . .

Peter

Who's behind the anti-ICE riots in New Jersey

 

The Twitter user known as DataRepublican, whom we've met in these pages before, has done another masterful job of analyzing the groups and individuals behind the out-of-control anti-ICE riots in New Jersey.  She condensed her findings into a lengthy post on X.  Here's how they begin.

ORG CHART EXPOSED: Which NGOs Are Organizing the Newark Protests, and How

How a six-word Signal message shut down a thousand-person protest.

On the night of June 1, 2026, journalist @NickSortor drove to Delaney Hall expecting what he'd seen for ten straight days: hundreds of protesters surrounding Newark's 1,000-bed ICE detention facility, human chains blocking federal vehicles, pepper balls and tear gas, helmets and gas masks distributed from organized supply stations, catered meals arriving on schedule. He found silence. The crowd — 200-plus the night before — was gone, with tens of thousands of dollars in pre-staged gear abandoned in place.

What happened between Sunday morning and Sunday night was a single message in an encrypted Signal group, as discovered by @bitchuneedsoap. A Cosecha NJ communicator posted a six-line announcement: "Cosecha is NOT mobilizing to Delaney Hall tonight. We are talking to strikers and their families to regroup." No negotiation, no vote, no gradual loss of enthusiasm. Some switch had been flipped off.

The natural question is how a protest of that size can be turned off with one message. The answer is that it was never a protest in the way most people understand the word. It was an operation — assembled, maintained, and disbanded through an organizational structure that looks, once you map it, like a military deployment with a nonprofit org chart.

The structure has four layers. Each answers a different question. Layer 1 decides whether to act. Layer 2 decides how many show up. Layer 3 decides what happens on the ground. Layer 4 keeps the whole thing running across days.

Understanding these layers is understanding how every major protest in America works, because the same people built the template.

There's much more at the link.  Follow it to learn precisely which organizations and individuals are funding and pre-planning all of the anti-Trump and anti-ICE demonstrations and other activities around the country.

We're going to see more and more "spontaneous" demonstrations and unrest as the mid-term elections draw closer.  Their objective will be to give the Democratic Party (and its further-left-wing supporters) a majority in both the House and the Senate, thereby stymie-ing President Trump as he tries to implement the rest of his agenda.  If they succeed in that, and in blaming all the country's problems at his feet, they're confident they can take back the Presidency in 2028.  Given a trifecta of President, House and Senate, they'll lock in their agenda so hard that it'll be impossible to root it out again.

I highly recommend reading all that DataRepublican has to say in the linked article.  I'm sure you'll see the pattern playing out in your own towns, cities and states.  As to what to do about it?  I'm sure you can come up with some useful ideas for yourselves . . .

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  The news has gone mainstream, with many additional details coming out.  Follow the link for more.

Medicine, health and gender ideology

 

I hadn't realized how endemic the gender apocalypse had become in the health care (?) industry until I read this article.

In Minton v. Dignity Health, Evan Minton, who was born female but masqueraded as a male, was scheduled by her doctor for a hysterectomy at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a Catholic hospital near Sacramento, in August 2016. Two days before the procedure, the doctor informed the hospital that she was transgender, and the hospital canceled the surgery. The hospital’s position was that the surgery was elective, part of a “transition,” and that, as a Catholic hospital, they could not participate in sex change operations.

The ACLU filed suit under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. The California Court of Appeals ruled in 2019 that Minton had standing to proceed, and in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Dignity Health’s appeal, leaving that ruling intact.

In the end, the San Francisco County Superior Court entered the following judgment: “It is adjudged that plaintiff Minton, Evan take nothing from defendant Dignity Health dba Mercy San Juan Medical Center.” Minton lost. She was awarded nothing.

In Hammons v. University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, the ruling went the other way when a federal court subsequently ruled that the hospital’s refusal to perform a hysterectomy on a woman who dressed as a man violated the Affordable Care Act.

. . .

Jessica Simpson, a Canadian transgender activist who retains male genitalia, filed a complaint against a gynecologist who refused to treat her, claiming discrimination. The complaint was filed with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia in 2019, though no resolution has been publicly reported.

A report by Advocates for Trans Equality states, “If a transgender woman’s health care provider decides she needs a prostate exam, an insurance company can’t deny it because she is listed as female in her records. If her provider recommends gynecological care, coverage can’t be denied simply because she was identified as male at birth.”

There's more at the link.

Verily, the mind doth boggle.  How on earth is an insurance company to assess the likely costs to be incurred by a prospective member if they can't be sure whether he/she is male or female?  Women have gynecological expenses that men don't have;  men have male-specific illnesses that women don't have.  It makes a difference to risks, premiums, etc.  For that matter, how about life insurance when life expectancy is affected by biological sex?  All other things being equal, women live several years longer than men, and insurance companies take that into account when deciding on the premium for life insurance policies.  What if they can't be sure of the biological sex (and hence natural life expectancy) of the person applying for insurance?

I've got a simple proposal.  Whenever anyone applies for health insurance, life insurance, or anything else where biological sex makes a difference, insist that they have to undergo a chromosome check.  If it comes back XX, they're female, no matter what they say they are.  If it comes back XY, they're male, ditto.  Only in the vanishingly small number of so-called "intersex" cases (generally accepted by authoritative medical sources as being far less than 1%) would further testing be required.  The insurance or medical procedures the individual seeks should be awarded on the basis of this chromosome test.  If it's not appropriate for their chromosomal (i.e. biological) sex, they can't have it unless they pay for it out of their own pockets and the provider is willing to provide it.  Period (you should pardon the expression).  Biologically female?  No subsidized prostate or testicular cancer exam for you.  Biologically male?  No subsidized birth control pills or cervical cancer test for you.  Is the examination or procedure you want against the moral or ethical code of the provider?  Then you don't get it from them.  End of story.

I think that would eliminate most of the legal problems facing the health care industry, exclude a great deal of the political correctness and "wokeness" involved, and save insurers a lot of money into the bargain.  What say you, readers?

Peter

Minneapolis has been planning its insurrection for a long time

 

Through a couple of links on the Internet, I came across this tweet from Insurrection Barbie.  I've checked out some of the references she gave, and they're legitimate.  I'm going to reproduce it in full here, because I think it deserves the widest circulation.

Minnesota has spent years building an infrastructure of ICE watch patrols, NGO backed rapid response teams, and politically wired nonprofits that can flip from ordinary life to street mobilization in minutes. 

The key to Minnesota’s rapid mobilization is not Twitter activism. It is an on the ground surveillance and response network that local reporters have already documented in detail. A Star Tribune investigation into the “organized resistance to ICE” in Minnesota reads like a field manual for modern grassroots intelligence operations.​

In south Minneapolis, volunteers spend hours driving what they openly call ICE patrols. Phones are mounted on dashboards. Every sighting of a suspicious SUV, every cluster of federal jackets, is recorded and dropped into Signal and WhatsApp groups that run silently in the background of daily life.​

Those chats are not small. A single Spanish language group described by local reporting grew from a few dozen members to hundreds as the federal crackdown began. One message that ICE is at a gas station, grocery store, or apartment complex can draw a crowd in minutes.​

Volunteers position themselves near schools, mosques, and high risk housing, phones ready. Their job is to film, warn, and, when they choose, physically interpose themselves between agents and targets.​

When roughly 2,000 federal agents arrive in a region that has spent years quietly building an anti enforcement machine, confrontation is not a question of if but when. 

The sequence looks like this:

• ICE surge and visible raids trigger heightened patrols and chat activity.
• A lethal incident happens. Video, rumors, and initial reports hit group chats and local media at the same time.
• ICE watch networks push urgent alerts, including locations such as the Whipple Federal Building and specific hotels.
• Within hours, local NGOs and national groups issue public calls to action. Protest times and locations spread across social media and encrypted channels simultaneously.

One organization appears repeatedly in any serious look at Minnesota’s anti ICE apparatus: COPAL, short for Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina. COPAL is not just another advocacy group. It runs a formal immigrant defense “rapid response” program that sits at the heart of Minnesota’s ICE watch system.

By late 2025, COPAL’s immigrant defense program had trained more than 10,000 people, a staggering number in a single state. Those trainees do not just sit at home. They plug directly into the Signal chats, patrol rotations, and rapid response networks that are now colliding with ICE in Minnesota’s streets.

The Vice President of COPAL is a DACA recipient who sits on the Board of Directors as well. His name is Edwin Torres DeSantiago and he has served on the leadership teams for the campaigns of:

    1. Tim Walz
    2. Peggy Flanagan
    3. Senator Tina Smith
    4. Senator Amy Klobuchar

He also sits on the Board of Trustees for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, showing his integration into elite institutional circles as well as movement politics.

They have a direct earmark from leading Democrats. 

COPAL publicly credits Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Amy Klobuchar for securing federal funds for COPAL and partner ACER to develop the Primero de Mayo Workers Center in Minnesota’s 5th District.

COPAL’s own statement thanks Omar and Klobuchar for their leadership and notes that these federal dollars will be invested in worker organizing and community power on Lake Street.

That also explains why the anti-ICE demonstrations ramped up so sharply just as Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz was being pilloried for turning a blind eye to such mega-scale corruption and misuse of taxpayer funds over so many years.  ICE's activities provided a distraction around which left-wing opinion could mobilize, and use it as a smokescreen to divert attention to Federal and other investigations of the missing billions of dollars in entitlement and aid funding.  The news media has, in large measure, lapped it up.  Independent and social media appear to be continuing the investigation, but are battling to publicize what they're finding, because every major news outlet is "distracted" from the subject (and, since most of them are themselves left-wing or progressive in orientation, are likely grateful for the excuse).

Thanks to Insurrection Barbie for a very enlightening tweet.  I'll be following her on X from now on.

Peter

Yet more evidence of how US taxpayers have been robbed blind by left-wing progressive policies

 

Two reports caught my eye over the weekend.  Just remind yourself as you read them that they are the fruit of four years of the Biden administration - and if President Trump is forced to back down on his policies (e.g. through losses in the mid-term elections, or court rulings) we'll be back in the same situation in no time.

First:  "SNAP’s Hidden Reality: 83 Million Citizens and Illegal Aliens Are Dependent on Food Aid Each Year".

The most frequently cited statistic about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is that about 43 million Americans rely on it each month to feed themselves and their families. That number is often used to justify the program’s scale and reach. But this monthly average hides a far more disturbing truth. Because of high turnover, the real number of Americans who receive SNAP benefits at some point during a given year is much higher. Federal data show that 52% of new enrollees leave within one year, and 67% within two years. That means that across twelve months, between 63 and 83 million unique individuals participate in the program. In other words, about 22% of the entire US population uses SNAP to buy food during any calendar year. This is not a small anti-poverty program. It is a vast, parallel food economy. The only way such numbers make sense is if many more illegal immigrants are benefiting from the system than politicians admit.

. . .

SNAP benefits are set to be suspended on November 1 if the shutdown persists, and states like California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington have each announced that their food programs for illegal immigrants will be suspended at the same time. These programs were supposedly distinct from SNAP, yet their funding halts when SNAP halts. That coincidence exposes the truth: the money, the systems, and the administrative pipelines are connected. States have long played a shell game, quietly routing federal funds into state-level programs for illegal immigrants. The shutdown has revealed the link.

The implications are enormous. If SNAP were truly separate from these state programs, the shutdown would inconvenience them, not paralyze them. Their paralysis proves a shared infrastructure, shared databases, shared eligibility systems, and, most troublingly, shared funding streams. This confirms what conservatives have long argued: state officials are using federal welfare mechanisms to subsidize benefits for illegal immigrants. It is not a clean firewall between programs. It is a revolving door.

There's more at the link.

Next:  "Nearly $200M in Direct Federal Grants Has Been Aimed at Expanding Programs to Serve Illegal Immigrants".

Illegal immigrants have benefitted from at least $197 million in direct federal healthcare-related grants since fiscal year 2021, according to new research from Open the Books. This figure does not include indirect spending on illegal immigrants via Medicaid, which was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be around $27 billion from FY 2017-2023, nor does it account for education spending that benefits illegal immigrants and their children, which amounts to an estimated $70 billion annually.

. . .

Health-related spending is principally directed towards programs serving the neediest members of society, such as the homeless, drug-addicted, or otherwise medically fragile. The expansion of programs to include illegal immigrants both encourages illegal migration into the United States and directs spending away from high-poverty Americans.

. . .

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150.7 billion per year [at] the federal state and local level. Meanwhile, this year’s budget reconciliation bill directs $45 billion to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s detention budget and nearly $30 billion to ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations over the next four years. The bill directs an additional $46.5 billion to border security infrastructure.

Again, more at the link.

So much for our taxpayer dollars.  So much for constitutional and legal provisions forbidding the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on those not entitled to such support.  The previous administration appears to have disregarded those provisions wholesale.  If these numbers don't demonstrate the absolute contempt that the progressive left wing of US politics has for taxpayers and regular citizens, then I don't know what will.

Even with all that President Trump has accomplished so far, we remain balanced on a knife-edge as far as our future fiscal policies are concerned.  If the progressive left gains control of the House and Senate during the 2026 mid-term elections, and/or if left-wing judges use the judicial system to block much of the President's program, then we're neck-deep in the financial dwang once again . . . and given how deep that noxious substance already is in our body politic, I don't know whether we'll be able to dig our way out again.  That's particularly troubling in the light of opinion polls suggesting that a majority of the electorate is not happy with the President's policies for one reason or another.  (Whether or not those polls are accurate is another question:  without knowing the exact statistics of who and how many were sampled, when and where, it's one I can't answer.)

It's up to all of us, individually and collectively, to keep up the pressure, encourage all those we know to think rationally and count their pennies (particularly those given to the taxman), and stop that from happening.

Peter

Talk about entitlement!

 

Courtesy of Midwest Chick, here's a social media post highlighting just how entitled to free handouts many people think they are in this benighted country.

There's a brief video clip at the link, showing his feelings - no, his absolute conviction - of entitlement.  I urge you to click over there and watch it for yourself.

EBT funds - i.e. the so-called "food stamp" program - are due to run out in November, thanks to the current government shutdown preventing Congress from reauthorizing that expenditure.  There are millions of Americans who are angry, upset, even panic-stricken at the thought of losing them.

My first reaction is that the bloated mess that such food assistance has become is long overdue to be cut back to essentials only - no sodas, no pizza, no lobster tails, no chips-and-dip, just basic supplies of regular, nutritious food that will provide an adequate daily diet for a typical family.  If that gores the ox of the suppliers of soda and sweets, so be it.  Why should my taxpayer dollars support such waste?

My second reaction is that food stamps were intended (back when they were first thought of) to be a temporary means of assistance to families who found themselves suddenly without sufficient income to make it on their own.  They were never intended to become a multi-year freebie handout to people who would never work hard enough to restore their family finances sufficiently to get off food stamps!  Sadly, that's what they've become in all too many cases.  I called an acquaintance yesterday who works in the social services department of a major municipality, and asked her what proportion of EBT recipients there had been getting those benefits for longer than a year.  She reckoned that more than half of the cases in her city had been getting those benefits for longer than five years.  So much for temporary assistance!

I'm not heartless or uncharitable, but it seems to me that requiring 20-odd hours of work per week to qualify for EBT/food stamps is hardly unreasonable.  Any reasonably able-bodied adult should be able to contribute that to his/her support.  To the man refusing to do so - sucks to be your kids, I guess, because they're going to go hungry thanks to your fecklessness and laziness (not to mention your amazing sense of entitlement and superiority).  Buddy, this taxpayer does not work for you, and isn't willing to tolerate your attitude any longer.

I'm sure my readers can cite examples of their own where they've seen this sort of entitled attitude in action.  Let us know about them in Comments.

Peter

President Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize

 

I've been getting awfully fed up with the brouhaha over whether President Trump should/should have/ever will win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the first place, previous winners of the Prize have comprehensively dishonored and discredited it merely due to their inclusion on the winners' roster.  Lawdog puts this nicely in perspective, so I won't repeat the details here.

My main objection is simply that the Nobel committee has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they're merely a collection of politically correct idiots.  I remember how disgusted I was when former President Obama received the award.  He had done (and has never done) anything even remotely justifying his receiving it.  He was (and remains) a political hack, a tool in the hands of those manipulating him, and they never allowed him to achieve anything positive.  It was a cretinous move to award him the Peace Prize, because anyone with a couple of working brain cells to rub together could figure that out for themselves;  and if he had any personal integrity at all, he should have refused the Prize, to demonstrate that he wasn't completely a puppet of outside forces.

Since his acceptance of the Peace Prize, it's been irredeemably dishonored in my eyes, and in the eyes of many around the world.  I don't want President Trump to be awarded the Peace Prize, and if he is, I want him to refuse to accept it.  Why would anyone with any self-respect want to be numbered among a bunch of losers like that?

Peter

What's really going on in Portland and Chicago right now...

 

... is the same playbook used by violent (and not-so-violent) progressive extremists for years.  They're twisting the rules of society, the social norms by which we live, and using them as a weapon against that very society.  With the help of the complicit news media, they're pushing a smokescreen of claimed oppression and intolerance to advance their own revolutionary agenda.

El Gato Malo offers his usual succinct analysis.

“kick the dog until it bites, then demand the dog be shot for biting.”

this is very much the current playbook of the agents provocateur seeking to decry as fascism any resistance to their own depradations ... and this is all coming to pass.

it’s all the simple, well worn playbook of “force your enemy into an impossible choice and then make the story about how they react.”

they call it “putting your target in a decision dilemma.”

the whole point is to act badly, provoke reaction, and then act as though the reaction were the story, that self-defense is aggression, and that those trying to clean up your mess or deal with your violence are the mess making bad guys.

you “lead with sympathetic characters” (like women and children) and you “play to the audience who isn’t there.”

but don’t take my word for it. go read their own websites. they are not shy about telling you how they do this and these are professionals paid for by vast networks of grants from the brandon administration (more here).

this whole shabby psyop masquerading as a morality play has been being set up for years.

. . .

the whole point is to be so provocative and violent that only violence can serve to resist or constrain it, then they call you violent.

what just happened in chicago is a prime example ... yes, indeed, a “woman got shot.” that woman was marimar martinez. it cannot be an accident that adam is leaving out the context that she (and others in her group) had been driving erratically around the ICE vehicles, boxing them in, coming inches from them and behaving in a highly threatening fashion even running red lights and driving the wrong way on one way streets to do so before they, wait for it, rammed the ICE vehicle with multiple vehicles of their own. (report on this)

“la maggie,” as she is known, was also armed with a 9mm handgun.

this was not “ICE shooting down some nice lady in cold blood.” she quite literally and unequivocally violently attacked them.

what’s astonishing here is that this is not an isolated incident. numbers of highly coordinated groups have been harassing and ramming ICE vehicles. here’s one from just a couple days ago.

the fact that there are so many examples of this taking place over extended periods of time is, in and of itself, quite telling.

astonishingly, the chicago PD seems to have been called off and left to allow this. it’s not as though it’s subtle and much of what is going on is a federal crime. this seems to be another version of the BLM riots playbook of “mostly peaceful ramming of federal vehicles and the injury ot federal officers” all getting the wink and the nod with no enforcement or protection from the depredations of “our team.” it’s only fascism when YOU do it. when we do, all good.

. . .

what about these antifa gangs in portland?

astonishingly, nock sortor, the reporter who got shoved down, is the one facing charges. he’s being arraigned today for “disorderly conduct.” his assailant has been neither charged nor arrested.

what are we to make of this sort of police and justice system?

just what is being protected here?

note the deliberation, planning, and coordination of this group using masks to hide faces and umbrellas to block cameras etc.

these are not amateurs.

the clear goal here is to provoke a national guard response and then make the story about “military dictator” instead of about lawless cities and corrupt officials.

it seems like this is the hill they want to die on.

newsom just ordered the code red.

they are spoiling for a fight and want to isolate trump and federal agencies to try to cast them as some sort of invading army as opposed to the ones coming to fix the wild mess and federal funding sinkhole created by their actions.

they are creating bad, high risk, difficult to navigate situations on purpose.

they are releasing rabid puppies into your house and then trying to make you the bad guy when you get caught on camera kicking one to keep from being bitten.

There's more at the link, and at the links provided in the above excerpt.

Have you been wondering where all the "NGO money" being disbursed by USAID and other agencies went to?  Have you been wondering how and why the last administration, in its last weeks in office, took extraordinary steps to disburse billions upon billions of our taxpayer dollars to newly-established bodies or organizations that had never done anything effective in their brief existence - but were led and managed by many of the most radical and dishonest progressive leftist politicians among us?

Wonder no longer.  That money was the funding pipeline for the radical left to continue its work.  President Trump cut off that lifeline the moment he could, and struck what I truly hope was a mortal blow to the progressive left's grassroots organization as he did so.  Deprived of funding, they've been thrown back on what they've already managed to misdirect and steal, rather than the flow of funding they assumed would still be coming in.  They can see the day when all their savings and reserves have run out, and those who misused government and taxpayer funds to amass them are facing the consequences of their actions.  That's why they're lashing out now - because they know their reserves are running out, and if they don't use them, they're going to lose them to investigators wanting to know where they've come from and claw them back if possible.  That's why Democrats in the Senate are demanding more than a trillion dollars from US taxpayers as their price to pass the budget - because they're relying on the graft, corruption and theft that will skim off a large chunk of that $1 trillion for their pet projects and progressive-left causes.  I'm not exaggerating.  Just look at what they're asking for in the present negotiations.

Senator John Kennedy ... pointed to a series of foreign aid initiatives that have raised eyebrows, which included millions of dollars for circumcisions and vasectomies in Zambia, funding for transgender programs in Nepal, and $4.2 million worth of LGBTQ initiatives in the Western Balkans and Uganda. He noted other examples, including $3.6 million in , half a million dollars for electric buses in Rwanda, $6 million for media organizations for Palestinians, and $300,000 for a pride parade in Lesotho.

Later that day, Kennedy appeared on Fox News, where he claimed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was not in control of his party and that far-left lawmakers were calling the shots.

Again, more at the link.

"Cooking classes and dance focus groups for male prostitutes in Haiti"???  What the hell does that have to do with good governance of these United States?  How can the Democratic Party even think of wasting a penny on such nonsense?  I'll tell you how - because precious little of it, if any, would reach those for whom it's ostensibly intended.  The rest would be siphoned off to fund the political violence and turmoil currently crippling our cities.

Expect renewed uprisings (they amount to nothing less) in leftist power centers like Portland and Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles, and others like them.  The left is playing for all the marbles.  President Trump is hampered by partisan judges and others who are trying as hard as they can to disrupt his response, and that will undoubtedly cause him problems;  but right now, according to my scorecard, he's winning more battles than he's losing, and he's not afraid to fight more of them.

So, when you see Portland and Chicago, and read the screaming "FASCIST!!!" headlines in the news media, you know what's going on - and who to believe.

Peter

The ghouls that walk our streets

 

Following on from our first article this morning, my friend Lawdog has penned his thoughts on the ghouls in our midst.  They've been exposed (yet again) by the murder of Charlie Kirk, but that's only the latest episode in which they've metaphorically danced in the blood of those they dislike.

Charlie Kirk — like him or dislike him — was willing to hold a dialogue with those on the other side of the political spectrum from him. He was right-wing, and he was willing to have conversation with those on the left-wing.

He was murdered by someone on the left-wing — yes, the alleged murderer was a leftist, I’ve read the charging instrument — and Charlie Kirk wasn’t even cold before left-wing doctors, teachers, attorneys, media personalities, therapists, professors, real estate agents, insurance agents, administrators, food service people, and service members didn’t just get callous, contemptuous, and cruel; but were gleefully laughing, dancing, singing, and ghoulishly posting evidence of such on social media, along with suggested kill lists of other conservative names, and wishes of suffering and death upon his grieving widow, kith,and kin.

Huh.

Now the conservatives are smacking back. Performative exhibitions of merriment and joy at the murder of another human being are getting the performers fired.

And we’re suddenly hearing: “We need to open a dialogue between the two political sides.”

. . .

Tell me, do: why should conservatives open a dialogue with people whose ghouls so publicly and exuberantly celebrate the deaths of conservatives — whether the conservatives be a media personality, or eight-year-old girls who just happen to live in Texas — to the point that I worry about how they treat any suspected conservative in their care?

I should open a dialogue with people who — should Rita or I die — will caper mirthfully upon our bodies?

Conservatives should open a dialogue with the side that paints a bloody huge target on conservatives — using brushes dipped in “Nazi”, “fascist”, and other dehumanising epithets — and then cheers when a conservative who dares open a dialogue gets murdered?

Nah. I’m good.

. . .

Get your sodding ghouls under control, first. Teach them — loudly, publicly, firmly, and often — that this sort of behaviour is not to be tolerated in polite society.

Then I’ll think about a “dialogue”.

There's more at the link.

I try to be Christian in my approach to people;  not to pre-judge them, but to accept them as fellow sinners in need of the grace of God.  However, there have been times over the past week when I could have sworn that some of those dancing in Charlie Kirk's blood (metaphorically speaking) were no more than demons spouting the propaganda of their master in Hell.  There was precious little (if any) humanity to be found in their rejoicing over the murder of an innocent man whose only "offense" was to believe differently than they did.

If we in the center and right of American politics were to behave towards the Left, and speak of them, the way they do to and about us, we'd have civil war in a heartbeat.  There'd be no room left for discussion, civilized argument, or debate.  I can only thank God (literally) that saner heads have so far prevailed in the center-right of US politics . . . but I don't know whether that will (or even can) continue.

I'm seriously concerned about Charlie Kirk's memorial service in Arizona this weekend.  President Trump will be there.  How many hard left supporters will consider it a good idea to try to assassinate him while he's there?  How many are already making plans to do so?  How many are likely to follow through with their plans, and are capable of doing so?  If I were the Secret Service right now, I'd be losing sleep considering those possibilities.

And yes, I agree with Lawdog.  There is no possibility of meaningful "dialogue" unless and until the knee-jerk hatred stops.  Golda Meir once said of Arabs:  "We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us."  Our progressives hate us, and our children, with a burning fire.  We will not have peace with them unless and until that fire is extinguished.  That can happen through their choice.  I hope and pray that it will - because if it doesn't, it'll take a fire brigade to put it out.  That fire brigade won't be using hoses.

Peter

Sometimes one can only nod in agreement

 

Arthur Sido is what I would consider a right-wing blogger (some would say he's extreme right-wing, but I know of others much further along that spectrum than he is).  I disagree with many of his views on race and culture.  However, sometimes he hits the nail on the head, as he did yesterday.

Back in the years following Obama we saw a less than subtle shift taking place, one that really took off with the death via heart failure of George Floyd. It was in place and just waiting the right trigger, and the carefully edited video of Floyd’s death was just what the doctor ordered. No longer was it sufficient to be “color blind” or “not racist”. Now we were told “silence is violence” and that failure to be sufficiently outspoken in condemning “racism” was no different than lynching.

It wasn’t enough to simply not disagree with them, instead you were required to vocally agree with whatever they said. I recall vividly mobs confronting timid Whites in restaurants and forcing them to repeat “black lives matter” . It didn’t matter whether they agreed or not, the point was intimidation and humiliation.

We have moved into a new stage, one where you can now be forcibly silenced through violence, and a significant number of people on the Left seem to have no problem with using assassinations, whether the target was Trump or Charlie Kirk, a decidedly mild conservative ... Kirk for his faults was out there in the open. Even with Trump already in the White House he was outspoken and doing events, and because he was known he was able to be targeted. They couldn’t defeat even a fairly genteel conservative in debate so they shut him up the same way the Bolsheviks and their bastard offspring always have done: by terror and murder.

My general rule of thumb in the past was to say that the last thing I wanted was for the Left to be silenced or censored. Letting those idiots talk conveyed my arguments far better than I could dream of by blogging. Let them speak and let people see how stupid and vile they are.

Maybe that was a mistake, and maybe I am guilty of some of the same naive thinking that normies are guilty of ... The one thing that has marked leftist politics from the beginning is violence to overcome resistance to their retarded ideas. They are returning to form in America and Kirk won’t be the last to fall.

There's more at the link.

We can already see deliberate attempts from the progressive left to portray Charlie Kirk's murderer as a young man driven to extremes by his youthful love story.  Walter Kirn put it like this:

Here's how this will play out, here's the meta-script, and please don't laugh it off.

How this all started is not how it will end. A story that began with a clear traditional moral shape, an innocent victim, a vile perpetrator, will be transformed using secondary characters, new revelations, and other dramatic elements into its very opposite -- a story of forbidden love, persecution by religious bigots, a  poignantly rebellious heartfelt protest against a World that Doesn't Understand.

There will then be a total split, far deeper than mere "politics," between the segments of the public that were captivated by two incommensurate tragedies.

Rod Dreher explodes in righteous anger at such a mischaracterization.

Sure enough, look at Montel Williams on CNN, saying that poor sweet Tyler was simply trying to “defend his lover,” not attack an ideology. This is the play now.

Like I said, trying to keep a cool head, but … what world do these freaks live in?! Tyler Robinson blew a hole in Charlie Kirk’s throat because he despised what Charlie Kirk said, and this ABC News reporter has a sentimental boner about how sweet their gay-lover chit-chat is?!

. . .

I am seriously, seriously shaken up about the country. People don’t even know what reality is! These left-wing people will believe whatever they need to believe to maintain their narrative. Do I need to remind you that one of the signs that a country is ready to receive a totalitarian dictatorship is a refusal to believe in Truth, only “truth” as what satisfies you emotionally?

These people who are turning to their AI lovers for emotional gratification, while knowing full well that these things aren’t real — it’s a sign, y’all. It’s a sign of ever-growing detachment from reality. They prefer the “truth” of the way the Machine makes them feel to actual reality.

Again, more at the link.

Tyler Durden observes that the "woke" news media are marching in lock-step on this one.

The people dancing on TikTok and laughing about the murder come from all walks of life, from teachers to social workers and, of course, mainstream journalists.  The widespread vitriol has debunked the longtime claim that such psychopathy is relegated to a fringe minority. 

In reality, violent bloodlust is a feature of the political left, not an anomaly.  We saw it after the multiple assassination attempts on Donald Trump and we see it even more after the death of Charlie Kirk.

The justifications are rampant, with leftists claiming (falsely) that Kirk was a "fascist, misogynist, racist, homophobe, etc.", thereby absolving themselves of their elation over his shooting.  The real issue is that Kirk told the truth, on DEI, on transgender cultism, on feminism - And because they could not win against him in open debate, they wanted him dead.

. . .

Being a left-wing journalist, [Washington Post columnist Karen] Attiah's comments are strategically open to interpretation.  In the worst case, she appears to be justifying Charlie Kirk's killing because continuing to allow him to live is the same as absolving "white" American violence.  In other words, Kirk's words are the same as violence, therefore killing him is an act of self defense.

However, like most leftists in the media, Attiah is unable to produce any examples of Charlie Kirk actually espousing violence, or calling for violence.

. . .

Woke activists have been scrambling to control the narrative on Kirk's assassination for the past several days, at first applauding the incident as righteous vengeance, then claiming that the shooter was "right wing" (a false narrative), and now calling for conservatives to "cool things down" as if conservatives are the source of the problem.

More at the link.

We've seen this barrage of lies, propaganda and vitriol erupt and expand over the past week.  It's going to go on, and get worse, because the progressive left has to have a cause around which to gather.  If they can persuade people that "We're the oppressed ones here!", they can generate renewed and increased resistance to President Trump and his policies.  In reality, of course, they'll be relentless and merciless in pursuing those who expose their falsehoods and fanaticism.  I doubt very much whether Charlie Kirk will be the only martyr to their efforts.

Those of us who believe in our constitutional republic and the rule of law would do well to read the words of those I've quoted above, and gird our loins, both physically and metaphorically.  If we live in areas infested by such radical leftists (or even within striking distance of them), we should be prepared to defend ourselves, our loved ones, and our homes.  That may be more of a reality than we'd like to admit.

Peter

Don't just build the structure, pay attention to the foundations

 

I've been watching the outpouring of emotion over the murder of Charlie Kirk and the other blatant, in-your-face crimes that have shocked our nation in recent weeks.  I'm sure most of us agree that something needs to be done;  but what, precisely, should be done is fiercely debated.

I'd like to suggest that if we all "started small", we'd get a lot more done than if we all worried about the "big picture".  Each of us, as individuals, is too small and ineffectual a factor to get much attention on a state or national level.  However, at our local level, we can certainly organize ourselves into groups of like-minded people and put pressure on our town and city councils to fix the problems we encounter.  If a few dozen, or a few score, citizens were to insist that our local cops be given the authority, the budget and the free hand they need to control crime on our local streets, it would make all of our towns safer places to live.  If local towns were to come together and demonstrate that they can succeed in doing that, then our county executives might apply the same lesson on a larger scale.  If enough counties do likewise, then our state might begin to create the necessary conditions for change and improvement:  and if enough states do the same, then our entire nation might find a way forward.

However, it all starts locally, with the foundations rather than the superstructure.  We can't wave a magic wand and change our national government, or the Deep State bureaucracy, or so-called "blue state" policies.  However, we can affect the day-to-day lives of our communities at our own level.  If enough of us refuse to tolerate bigotry, extremism and dogmatism, we can take back our own environment.  If enough of us do that, we can inspire others to do likewise . . . but it all begins with the individual.

Therefore, let's not worry about founding new chapters of Turning Point USA, or joining the political party of our preference.  Let's join local churches, or make sure that local chapters of the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides are run in a balanced and sane manner, and do our best to see to it that local schools aren't infested with extremist views that make it a trial and a punishment for our children to attend them.  All that is within our power to do, if we're willing to exert ourselves for the good of our communities.

Have at it!

Peter

This is so ridiculously stupid, it's an indictment of the "creative" artists responsible for it

 

I couldn't believe this article was real, but I'm assured it is.

Marvel Rivals video game is ramping up the LGBTQ+ representation with its fourth game release this month by featuring the sister of Thor, the Asgardian God of Thunder, who is a lesbian with a transgender husband.

The storyline for the game, put out by NetEase Games in collaboration with Marvel Games, follows villain character Doctor Doom who meets his alternate reality self — who is a hero — and that causes a “timestream entanglement” in which heroes and corresponding villains come to fight each other for domination over the universe. It is a first person shooter-styled game first released last year and already has several gay characters introduced.

The new release is reportedly set to add the character Vanguard Angela (Aldrif Odinsdottir), who is the daughter of Asgard’s God King, Odin. That makes her the sister of popular Marvel comic book hero, Thor, God of Thunder.

In the comics, the character, Angela, is married to a male character named Sera who was later written as having “transitioned” to  female in the comics.

There's more at the link.

How does this fit the Norse canon in any way, shape or form?  (Although, I suppose if Loki could turn himself into a horse and bear a foal, a lesbian goddess is far from impossible.  I draw the line at a transgender husband, though.  Even Odin couldn't turn his famously blind eye to that!)

Of course, if gay and/or homosexual gods are to become a thing, it'll give new meaning to the name of their home.  Perhaps "Asgard" should be re-spelled with a second "S" in the first syllable, and a "U" in the second?

Peter

The backlash grows against crime - and spreads to entire races

 

I think President Trump spoke for the majority of Americans in his comments yesterday about the murder of a young Ukrainian woman on a North Carolina transit system.  His statement is very brief, but I hope all my readers will take a couple of minutes to listen to it.

An equally tragic situation is arising in terms of relations between racial and ethnic groups in this country.  More and more people are unequivocally equating criminal violence with black crime and black violence.  Eric S. Raymond pointed out yesterday:

The part of me that was once an idealistic anti-racist liberal marching for civil rights died its final death last night as I watched the video of Irina Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail, being  fatally stabbed in the throat from behind by a black savage I refuse to name.

What has finally broken me is, incidents like that aren't even a surprise anymore. The frequency of brutal, senseless murders by "African-Americans", both individually and in predatory mobs, has risen exactly as rapidly as social and coercive controls on their behavior have weakened.

Meanwhile, for anybody who's wondering, American whites still have about the same crime rate as Switzerland. When enforcement of norms disintegrates, only intelligent people with low time preference still act civilized. 

As I've watched us sliding down the civilizational failure gradient, the question I've been increasingly unable to dismiss is this: was the whole ugly apparatus of racial repression - segregation, sundown towns, lynchings - really just senseless hatred? Or was it a rational containment strategy evolved under pressure from living alongside a large, visually distinct population of low-IQ savages?

I think I know the answer now.  And I hate knowing it. I preferred my innocence.

It doesn't do any good to protest that this particular savage was "mentally ill", whatever you think that means. The mobs that routinely form to beat up and kill whites unwary enough to wander onto their turf aren't psychotic, unless all Blacks are psychotic. 

Yes, yes, I know. If you were to select a population of whites for the same distribution of IQ and time preference as American Blacks, and then coddle them, scholarship out their brightest kids for four generations, and tell them all of their failures are society's fault, you'd get the same level of pathology and violence in about the time it took you to say "dyscultural and dysgenic".

That doesn't matter. We're not dealing with that hypothetical. We're dealing with reality. The reality is that we have a predation problem that will only be solved when our actual population of low IQ savages is contained again. Creatures like Irina's murderer, cognitively unable to participate in civilization, must be subject to either segregation or repression so brutal that they live in fear of it.

I don't really want to live in the kind of society that can do either these things. But Irina Zarutska's murder is the seal on my realization that there are no longer soft options, only hard choices.

I'd prefer the one where armed citizens routinely shoot down creatures like that at the time of the attempted crime, or immediately after it. All the alternatives seem far worse.

I've devoted much of my life to fighting the evils of racism and bigotry.  I bear the physical scars of that struggle on my body and in my mind.  I've written about them on occasion in these pages, as regular readers will know.  I absolutely hate reading such words from a balanced, sane commenter like Eric Raymond . . . but I know he's merely voicing the reactions of a great many Americans from other racial groups.  They're beginning to blame all blacks for the actions and attitudes of criminal blacks.  Given the number of cities that tolerate such offenders as the Charlotte murderer, it's almost impossible to advance a meaningful counter-argument.  There are simply too many such criminals out there, and unless and until they're dealt with, permanently, in the eyes of other racial and ethnic groups they will continue to drag their own race down into the ordure in which they swim.

When trying to help the victims of racial and ethnic violence in Africa, I had to learn (the hard way) that the only way to protect innocent victims was to end the onslaught of their (and my) violent predatory enemies, any way I had to.  I was a priest, and worked with many other priests.  The only ones who were effective ministers of the Gospel were those who realized that when Christ commanded his followers to buy a sword if they didn't own one, he wasn't joking.  We bought the modern equivalent of swords, and we used them to keep our flocks safe.  It felt very weird (at first) to be wearing a gun beneath my vestments, or have one stashed close to hand in case of need, but it was necessary under the circumstances, and many of us did so.  How many Americans are willing to contemplate their pastors and clergy doing likewise in today's society?  Unless we can put an end to this senseless criminal violence, congregations all over the country may have to make that choice.

May God have mercy on the victims, and may the guilty be brought to justice and condign punishment:  and may those who tolerate, support and encourage the guilty suffer the same consequences.

Peter

The deeper we dig, the worse the smell becomes

 

In the relatively short time that President Trump has been in office, investigations have uncovered misallocation of funds, corruption, bribery and malfeasance to an astonishing extent.  I'm willing to bet most go back to the Obama administration, when covert corruption of the system of government became entrenched.

Two articles caught my eye over the past couple of days.  The first refers to the Palisades fire in California last year.

Millions of dollars raised to help victims of the 2025 California wildfires have ended up in the coffers of unrelated nonprofits pushing a variety of progressive causes, a Washington Free Beacon review found. Some of the groups that have received funds explicitly exclude white people from their services, while others advertise programs for illegal aliens.

FireAid, a celebrity-studded fundraising organization that raked in about $100 million for wildfire relief efforts, has distributed money to more than 160 California nonprofits. Its flagship event on Jan. 30, produced by the Annenberg Foundation, featured performers like Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Dr. Dre, Stevie Wonder, and Sting, among others.

There's more at the link.

What appears conspicuous by its absence is the complete lack of support from FireAid to actual victims of the disaster.  As far as we know, left-wing progressive liberal organizations benefited, but not a single property owner was compensated for losses suffered in the fire.  I wonder if those who donated to FireAid knew that - and how they feel about it now?  If it were me, I'd be demanding a refund.

The second article is from Jeff Childers, who notes that President Trump appears to be uncovering all sorts of interesting links between the Soros Foundation and other major progressive donors, coupled to the massive spread of non-governmental organizations (NGO's) who receive such donations and use them without having to account for what they're doing with the money.

Let’s connect some dots! First, yesterday President Trump randomly and quite colorfully posted about how the Soros family should be investigated for mob-like racketeering. Fair enough. No arguments here. But … why now?

. . .

The headlined but unnamed “firm” is mega-NGO Arabella Advisors, which the Times admitted “manages several ‘dark money’ funds that support Democrats and the progressive movement.” By “several dark money funds,” it meant hundreds.

. . .

Now let’s add the USAID connection. Over the last decade, Arabella Advisors and its woketopus of blandly named subsidiaries minted a cottage industry for USAID careerists, hiring them in the septic-tanker loads. And Arabella’s biggest donors, including the aforementioned Gates Foundation, were also —not coincidentally— some of the nation’s largest USAID grant recipients.

Now we can see the entire, obscene length and girth of the woke gravy train. Our own money flowed from USAID to the Gates Foundation and other big platforms, then to Arabella, and then to leftwing NGOs, Democrat politicians, and progressive activist groups. It was a kind of perpetual-motion donor machine where accountability disappeared in a puff of sulphuric smoke at each handoff.

You must admit it was a devilishly brilliant scheme, tricking us into paying for our own destruction.

. . .

Trump’s RICO drumbeat against Soros hints that this whole philanthropy-politics pipeline is about to be treated as what it is: a criminal enterprise. Trump’s post about Soros and RICO and the Gates–Arabella unraveling link up at the same networked-funding “philanthropic” ecosystem.

However it happens, if that USAID → Mega-platforms (like Gates) → Arabella → progressive activist pipeline is finally switched off, the political effect would be massive. Arabella’s fiscal-sponsor funds have quietly underwritten much of the left’s operational backbone: voter registration groups, climate activism, racial justice nonprofits, education campaigns, and ballot initiatives. Cutting the pipeline means many of those groups would lose dependable, pooled, and largely anonymous funding streams. They’ll struggle to sustain staff, payroll, and field operations at the current scale.

Again, more at the link.

Remember, an organized financial network of behind-the-scenes support for progressive left-wing politics doesn't get set up overnight.  This has been constructed over years, possibly even decades.  As I mentioned earlier, I suspect it swung into high gear when President Obama was elected.  Indeed, this left-wing political machine might have made it a priority to elect a president whom they could control, and who could be "managed" to enable such behind-the-scenes chicanery.

I have no objection at all to any shade of political opinion funding its operations in an open, transparent, honest way.  There should be accountability, of course, but openness is a great sanitizer.  It's when things are done in secret, with money shuffled from group to group and account to account so often that it becomes untraceable, that things get murky.  From what Mr. Childers has said, it looks as if the Soros-Arabella axis is as murky as they come.  One hopes we'll get to the bottom of it in due course.

I'm particularly going to watch for indications of how many US taxpayer dollars were diverted to progressive left-wing partisan politics via USAID and NGO's.  I won't be surprised to learn it was in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.  If so, one hopes the perpetrators will be hunted down and prosecuted for their misdeeds - just as those raising funds under false pretenses, no matter how carefully worded in evasive, weaselly terms, should also be held accountable.

Peter

Turns out Cracker Barrel has been "woke" for a long time

 

Robbie Starbuck has done a deep-dive investigation into the DEI practices at Cracker Barrel, and reveals that the company has been getting more and more "woke" for years.  Here's an excerpt.

Here’s the highlights you need to know:

• Cracker Barrel has funded "all ages" Pride events for many years like Nashville Pride and Third River City Pride.
• Cracker Barrel worked with the far left HRC organization and reportedly sponsored HRC events for 10 years. They even brought an HRC representative to their Tennessee HQ to do a pronoun and transgenderism training. We’ve included photos of this in the video. As a reminder, the HRC supports child sex changes and men in women’s bathrooms. They work to normalize/legalize both things and they work to force transgenderism in the workplace.
• Cracker Barrel worked with a group called Conexión Américas as part of their DEI efforts. This group helps illegal immigrants, providing them lawyers and the executive director opposes President Trump’s deportations.
• Cracker Barrel sponsored the Out & Equal LGBTQ Workplace Advocate Conference and presented a workshop on how Cracker Barrel has made progress supporting LGBTQ+ causes. This group works to push sexual topics and pronouns into the workplace.

. . .

To put it mildly, Cracker Barrel has forgotten who their core customers are. It’s time for us to remind them.

They depend on YOU to keep their business afloat so now YOU have to ask yourself: Do you want to fund people or companies that hate your values?

It’s time to remind them who their customers are.

If you think their values don’t align with yours and you’re a customer who wants to speak out, you can write to them here: https://guestrelations.crackerbarrel.com/s/contactsupport

Reporters can also call their reporter hotline at: 615-235-4135 or email them: media.relations@crackerbarrel.com

Remember to ALWAYS BE KIND. Many in customer service agree with you. Being rude hurts our cause!

There's more at the link, including a 15-minute video report.  Click over there for the full details of how Cracker Barrel has been spending our money on its loony left philosophies.

Cracker Barrel is, of course, entitled to spend its money any way it pleases.  I, as a customer, am equally entitled to spend my money where and when I choose.  After reading the above reports, I won't be spending it at Cracker Barrel (where a group of friends and I have been regulars for Sunday breakfast for several years).

Peter

Dave Chapelle explains the Jussie Smollet affair

 

He's not backward in coming forward.

Personally, I think Jussie Smollet made up the whole thing to attack President Trump's policies and make himself look good to the DEI/BLM/Antifa crowd.  It's good to know some of his own people recognize that too, and aren't afraid to call him on it.

Peter

Did ActBlue use mortgage chicanery to disguise money laundering?

 

If a newly released report is correct, that may be the case.  For those who don't know it, ActBlue is a major fund-raising operation of and for the Democratic Party, claiming to have raised up to $16 billion since its establishment.  The question now becomes, where did at least some of that $16 billion come from?

It looks (at least on the basis of the information released so far) as if hundreds of millions of dollars in vaguely-sourced, unattributed funds was used to finance "mortgages" on properties that were overvalued by dozens or scores of times - and once inside the conventional banking system, those mortgage funds could be recycled and "washed" through entirely legal transactions, benefiting both the progressive left and the suppliers of the funds (who might have been drug cartels, agents for one or more foreign powers, billionaire oligarchs, or whatever).

For example, the report notes:

• A woman named Regina Wallace-Jones, along with Stefford Jones, presumably her husband, bought [a] home from Clarum Corporation on May 21, 2002, for $689,500.
• On the same day, Regina Wallace-Jones and Stefford Jones received a $651,600 loan mortgage from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc.
• Also on that day, Regina Wallace-Jones received (1) a $651,600 loan and (2) a $552,253 loan from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc.
• Also on that day, the sale price was listed as $68,950,000, with two unlisted sources making additional loans of $10,035,000 and $55,125,000.
• On May 21, 2002, when Steffond and Regina bought 1257 Runnymede St. from Clarum Corporation, there were five simultaneous filings on the same day, three with identical $689,500 “sale prices,” but with different loan amounts or borrowers, as well as two other wildly different sales prices and loan amounts.
• On May 21, 2002, the mortgage loan of $10,035,000 versus the listed “sales price” represented “a grossly inflated loan-to-value (LTV) ratio” that appeared to be a “highly likely synthetic debt injection or a placeholder loan.”
• Then, on December 6, 2002, Regina Wallace-Jones and Stefford Jones received two additional mortgage loans, totaling $551,520 from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc. and $100,350 from Wells Fargo Bank.
• On December 24, 2004, Steffond Jones and Regina Wallace-Jones got a $160,000 mortgage loan from Wells Fargo Bank, and on January 13, 2005, the couple got a $250,000 mortgage loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank.
• On July 15, 2015, Steffond Jones appears to have sold the Runnymeade home to himself and his wife using three mortgage loans of (1) $565,000, (2) $74,800, and (3) $565,000, from Wells Fargo Bank.

Put that lot together, and the transactions begin to smell like a very old, very rotten fish, don't they?

As I said, this is very much at an early stage . . . but if further investigation proves the initial report to be accurate, we may be talking about money laundering in the billions, if enough transactions are uncovered.  Is this why ActBlue appeared to go into crisis mode after President Trump was elected?

Pass the popcorn . . .

Peter